5643

I didn’t realize you could turn the question marks off. (I’m sure there are a lot of good tips like that, buried in this 188 page thread :) ) I will be doing that when I fire up the game tonight. Not knowing where things are hidden will make those surprise finds a little more impactful and will also give me more reason to explore areas off the beaten path.

Witcher 3 has me wondering if it’s time to upgrade my video cards. The computer I had built has SLI’d 660’s, but they are starting to show their age. If I try to run above Medium, my frame-rate drops any time there is a lot of hair flying around. Feeling like I’m missing something cool by not having the “nVidia Hair Processor” cranked up to full or something.

5644

For those of you who got started with The Witcher 3, GOG has the first two games on sale for practically nothing: $1.49 and $2.49, respectively.

The Witcher 1 feels really dated at this point, and the Witcher 2 is gated by the most annoying tutorial ever, but if you’re like me and are willing to slog through that to get the backstory after finishing The Witcher 3, you can get both games for four freaking dollars!

5645

I’m playing with a much lower spec video card, Radeon 6850, and I am also contemplating upgrading. I’d say that a SLI 660 setup will be more than enough for me personally, but Stussser and I keep arguing about what is acceptable. The Hair Works is among the highest demanding features for a pretty low return, in my opinion at least.

For what its worth I have a 2560x1440 monitor but I’m forced to play at 1920x1080. But I am playing at high graphics settings. I tried 2560x1440p on low settings but the texture quality is hurt too much, whereas the difference between High and Ultra is almost indistinguishable. The biggest improvements I found in terms of tweaking settings was to set overall to high, then shadows to low, hairworks off, and in post-processing; ambient occlusion off, chromatic aberration off.

Honestly the graphics are close enough that it is still hard for me to justify $400 (Canadian) on a GTX 970, which seems to be the best step up.

5646

Turn off Hairworks. It’s a huge drag on the system and it really doesn’t improve the experience.

5647

I have GTX 970 (got it 4 days after TW3 came out for $300) and I turned off hairworks. On Geralt it does not even look great, and on monsters it is not that noticeable in the heat of combat. 60fps is vastly more important to my enjoyment.

5648

Hairworks and foliage distance seemed to affect performance for me far, far more strongly than pretty much any other settings.

5649

Going to give that a shot tonight. Although, even at Medium the graphics are pretty nice. We’ll see if I notice the difference when I turn it up to High and adjust down the hair.

5650

Turn shadows to medium and ambient occlusion off - those cost maybe 5-10fps each and are hard to tell in game.

5651

Ambient occlusion makes huge difference I’d say. Shadows can be safely set to medium, not a huge difference there. But HBAO+ improves the scene significantly:

http://international.download.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-ambient-occlusion-interactive-comparison-1-nvidia-hbao-plus-vs-off.html

5652

I hate those sliders. They explicitly prevent you comparing with and without. It should flip between with and without every 2 seconds.

Playing the expansion now… and while their cutscenes are better than everyone else’s they’re still less fun than marauding round the countryside. I wish there was a bit less shutting me into conversations and a bit more abandoned sites full of alghouls.

5653

I don’t get it. How do they prevent you comparing it ? Can’t you slide the slider quickly to see the very obvious difference ?

5654

I missed a ton of ? in the area where the expansion takes place, so I’m getting a bit of that anyway. Except I come in as a badass superdude and dispatch the baddies with one or two swipes of my sword or an extended fire bath. Which I don’t mind at all. Though the 1xp is kind of silly. :) But I also have caught a couple of quests like “Little Red” that I missed the first time around, so I’m glad.

5655

Huh, I just went and turned it on and yeah, the penalty is not that bad; seems worth it. Thanks.

5656

Hair and shadows were definitely the reason for my frame rate issues. I ran the nVidia optimizer and it spit out Ultra for most things, Hairworks set to low and shadows set to medium. I overrode the shadows to “low” and fired up the game. Running smooth as can be now, and I can’t tell a lick of difference in the hair, honestly. Everything else looks really sharp and vibrant now.

5657

Sounds good. I found it crazy that with shadows set to low, the shadows still match Geralt’s shape and proper location of the sun quite well. Man we are a long way from the days that turning shadows on low would result in a round blob.

I got my PS3 / DS3 controller working and to be honest, the game is more relaxing with a controller than mouse and keyboard. Recommended if you haven’t tried it.

5658

This was a dumb comment from a dumb person :)

5659

Wait - just finished Book 4 in the Witcher series of books, and I don’t see a book 5??? Surely book 4 isn’t the last in the series?

5660

I think there are 7 novels but there are some that still haven’t been translated to English yet.

5661

Books in the series:

[ol]
[li]The Last Wish
[/li][li]Sword of Destiny
[/li][li]Blood of Elves
[/li][li]Time of Contempt
[/li][li]Baptism of Fire
[/li][li]The Swallow’s Tower
[/li][li]Lady of the Lake
[/li][/ol]

And there’s a recent prequel called Season of Storms. Not all have been translated to English, and Baptism of Fire just got published in Brazilian Portuguese.

5662

It’s a good thing I’m a slow reading and I’m only 25% of the way into Blood of Elves. Those translators have some time to work.